Maggie’s Maturity
This was an essay I wrote about the character Maggie from Eliot’s Mill on the Floss from my ENG 345 class, The Victorian Period at the University of North Carolina Greensboro.
Maturity often times comes with age; other times, maturity comes through the experiences one endures but what really constitutes maturity? In The Mill on the Floss, the main character, Maggie, does not gain maturity with age but through her experiences. However, it could also be argued that Maggie, despite all her growth, is still very childlike at the end of the novel. So it could be said that people at all, but behaving maturely for immature motivations.
Within the first book of novel, Chapter One, we see Maggie’s maturity in the books she reads like “The History of the Devil,” as opposed to books with just pictures in them; however, her immaturity arises upon her father’s reaction to Mr. Riley’s disapproval of her reading such books. “Go, go!” her father cried, “Shut up the book, let’s hear no more o’ such talk. It is as I thought – the child ‘ull learn more mischief nor good wi’ the books. Go, go and see after your mother,” (Eliot, 19). But Maggie does not see her mother. Instead, she goes “into a dark corner behind her father’s chair, . . . nursing her doll . . .” (Eliot, 19). Here we see how Maggie’s desire to impress her father as well as his guest has failed and thus contorted her back into a sulking, disobedient child. In reality, she only feigns maturity to seek her father’s approval and impress others around her.
Later in the text, Book Three, Chapter Two, we get to see how Maggie pulls through in a time of crisis as well as outshine her family in maturity. In this chapter, Mrs. Tulliver is crying about the fact that her china and other personals have to be sold and Tom has decided to take her side, instead of their father’s, who is lying in bed, suffering from a stroke and Maggie get angry at their selfishness. “Maggie had witnessed this scene with gathering anger. The implied reproaches against her father – her father, who was lying there in a sort of living death – neutralized all her pity for griefs about table-cloths and china; and her anger on her father’s account was heightened by some egotistic resentment at Tom’s silent concurrence with her mother in shutting her out from the common calamity.” Typically, anger is not seen as a sign of maturity, but here, it is justified by the fact the Maggie’s family has turned against her father as well as herself due to the fact that the china is going to be sold. However, this is the height of her maturity whereas the rest of her inner thoughts shift downward into jealousy and resentment, for within the second half of the second sentence she does claim to hold “some egotistic resentment at Tom’s silent concurrence” as well as “with her mother in shutting her out from the common calamity.” Now it was Maggie’s own sense of justice to side with her father, but the fact that Tom did not makes her hate the brother she previously idolizes and she also feels jealous because her mother included him in her misfortunate and not Maggie. Again, Maggie’s “maturity” is only to prove her love for her father, not so much to actually do the right thing. One could also say she acts this maturely to spite her mother’s silly whims, thus contradicting her actions and making her all the more immature.
In the sixth book, thirteenth chapter, Maggie is presented with the opportunity to run away with Stephen Guest but her childish naivety stops her, even though she is old enough and experienced enough to understand the circumstances of the situation. Stephen has taken them out on the lake and they are drifting into “unknown waters.” “But at last Stephen, who had been rowing more and more idly, ceased to row, laid down the oars, folded his arms, and looked down on the water as if watching the pace at which the boat glided without his help. This sudden change roused Maggie. She looked at the far-stretching fields – at the banks close by – and felt that they were entirely strange to her. A terrible alarm took possession of her.” Maggie does seem mature to take alarm in the situation and be concerned about Stephen’s intentions, but upon closer inspection, one can see it is her childlike fear of the uncertainties of this new situation that makes her take heed.
Reading ahead, Maggie tries to rationalize her reaction with concern for Lucy’s (Stephen’s fiancé) feelings and Stephen reasons “See, Maggie, how everything has come without seeking – in spite of all our efforts.” Again, it would appear that Maggie’s rationalization is reasonable and selfless but it is more irrational and selfish than ever. She and Stephen have already begun this relationship; the mature thing to do would be to stop hiding it and just embrace that fact. Yet she fears the unknown that lies beyond with Stephen and thus is trying to grab onto something that she knows, even though this known perception is slightly unrealistic. So instead of finally growing up and making the adult decision to follow Stephen, she turns to her childish love for her brother and goes to save him, thus extinguishing all hopes of fully maturing into a real woman. While it is the right to go and saves one’s brother, metaphorically speaking, by leaving the boat, Maggie is returning to being Tom’s little sister instead of staying with Stephen and stepping into womanhood.
No certain age or amount of experience makes a person completely mature and excludes them from moments of immaturity. In the end, Maggie was never that mature. True, she did things for the greater good of others and thus that made her mature, but she also did those same mature acts for her own naïve and childlike love of her brother whom she could not live without. So maybe people do not mature as well as one would have hoped. Simply, these moments of maturity are just attempts to sate one’s own need to fulfill childlike fantasies instead of excepting the realities of adulthood.
Eliot, George. The Mill on the Floss. Ed. Gordon S. Haight. New York: Oxford
University Press, 2008.
